1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to optical systems, more particularly to optical systems for spatial light modulator display systems.
2. Background of the Invention
In recent years, the use of spatial light modulators for creating images in display systems has become more prevalent. The most common spatial light modulators are arranged in an x-y array of individually controlled elements, such as liquid crystal devices (LCD), or digital micromirror devices (DMD.TM.).
Typically, these modulators have elements corresponding to each "dot" of resolution on a one-to-one ration. A VGA (640.times.480) resolution display would then have 480 lines of elements of 640 elements per line. As the resolution increases, the number of elements increases. Since most of these elements are of a set size, the panel containing the modulator array must get larger as well.
Higher resolution images such as SVGA (800.times.600), XGA (1024.times.768) and SXGA (1280.times.1024), and their correspondingly larger arrays must have larger optics. At some point, the cost and size of the optics becomes prohibitive. Larger optics may result in a degradation of performance of the optical system, with the lenses not able to achieve the required performance.
Therefore, an optical solution is needed allowing use of higher resolution, larger spatial light modulator panels.